


October

by ottermo



Series: Fandot Creativity [10]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: F/M, Fandot Creativity, Gen, Late Late Late Posting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 05:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14230065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Relics from an old FCN which never got posted here. Herc finds a locket, and Arthur falls for one of the customers in his corner shop.





	1. Locket

**Author's Note:**

> Here was I, thinking I’d uploaded all my backlog from previous FCNs, only to find that these two have been hiding on my Google Drive for more than a year...
> 
> These were from October 2016, and for whatever reason, they never made it to tumblr, so I missed them when I went through my tumblr tag checking for things to upload. 
> 
> Anyway. They’re here now.

She is picky with jewellery. All the trinkets she owns are stored neatly in a box - brooches, earrings, the odd bracelet, and one or two necklaces that had belonged to her mother, though Herc had never seen her wear them. And it wasn’t as though he had much opportunity - or inclination - to peruse her jewellery box regularly, but once, when she accidentally left it lying open on her dressing table, he had spotted a small square of silver, tucked into one corner.

Peering closer, he recognised it as a locket, though apparently the fastening that had once held it to a chain had broken off. It looked rather forlorn, Herc thought, cut adrift like that. Not at all in keeping with Carolyn’s apparent policy on accessories: all the rest were in good condition, ready to wear whenever she pleased. Apart from the locket, there didn’t seem to be anything she’d kept out of pure sentimental value - which, to be fair, was exactly what he’d expect, having been familiar with her ways for some months.

Curiosity about the tiny object filled him; would it, he wondered, be all _that_ bad if he were to peek inside?

No.

Probably not.

He reached out a hand, and had almost reached it when he heard the telltale creaking of a floorboard on the landing outside, which let him know Carolyn was on her way back into the bedroom. He moved nonchalantly away from the dressing table, resisting the temptation to hum a little tune of innocence.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t looking for a chain, hadn’t even thought about it, but a few months later, his watch came off its strap. He took it to the little shop he always frequented for repairs, and as he was waiting at the counter, something caught his eye: the glint of a delicate silver chain, with an empty fastening hook clearly in view. He pointed it out to the shopkeeper.

“Ah, that’s my second-hand bureau,” the man said, conspiratorially. “Sometimes, people just don’t come back to pick up the things I’ve mended, or else they bring me a new strap or chain to fit when there’s nothing wrong with the one they’ve got. I keep the leftover bits and pieces about, because you never know when they might come in handy.”

“Would you sell it to me?” Herc pressed.

The shopkeeper smiled. “’Course.”

And so Herc walked to his car with a tiny paper bag in his pocket, in which dwelt the shiny silver chain.

He debated whether to give it to Carolyn casually, asking her if she had any use for it. But what if she’d forgotten all about the locket? She might simply say no, and he’d never find out what was so special about it.

He decided to fix it himself, and waited for the right moment to do so.

 

* * *

  
She had banned him from buying her anything on Valentine’s Day that year, which played right into Herc’s hands. At dinner, he cleared his throat and reached into his pocket. “Before you say anything, I didn’t buy you this. In fact, you might recognise it.”

He brought out the locket, safely smuggled from her bedroom into his car, where he’d affixed it to the chain after ten solid minutes of swearing as the catch kept missing the minuscule hook. It dangled on its chain, bobbing about slightly (due to gravity and its fellow forces, not because his hand was shaking in anticipation, naturally).

Carolyn frowned. “Where did you get that?”

Herc grinned. “I saw it in your jewellery box, ages ago. I didn’t want to snoop, but I thought you might like to be able to wear it, since you’ve kept it all this time.”

Her frown deepened. “‘All this time’? Hercules, I advise you to continue this line of thinly-veiled inquiry carefully. Was that a comment on my age?”

“Of course not. Just on the…quality of the locket. It’s clearly not new. There are a couple of marks, some of the decoration is a bit worn.”

“I see. You just spotted it one day, you say? You’ve not made a detailed study of it?”

It seemed pointless to deny it, so he just chuckled. “Well, at least it has a use again now. And I didn’t buy anything new, the chain was second hand, I picked it up weeks ago. So this doesn’t violate any of this year’s gift-giving regulations.”

Carolyn huffed.

He looked back at her, expectant.

“Fine,” she said. “Open it. I can tell you want to. I don’t know why you haven’t already, you’re obviously dying to know what’s inside.”

“It had barely crossed my mind,” Herc said, his fast fingerwork belying his words as he hurried for the clasp. He pried the locket open with some effort, since it clearly hadn’t been used for some time.

There was only one picture inside, in the right-hand frame. It showed a tiny red face peeping out from what seemed to be a mixture of blanket and babygro. The baby’s eyes were wide open, its mouth making a little ‘o’ as if both confused and amazed, all at once. “Arthur,” said Herc, fondly. “Goodness. He still does that face.”

Even Carolyn grinned at that. “He does.” She sighed. “He gave me the locket himself, when he was about nine. Put himself in one side, and his father in the other. The picture of Gordon was from one of our wedding snapshots. Cutting that up wasn’t a popular decision at the time.”

Herc tapped the left-hand frame. “Who took it out?”

Carolyn snorted. “I did, of course. And I almost got rid of it entirely when the chain snapped, but look at that face. I couldn’t take Arthur’s picture out and put it anywhere else, it’s too small. So I just…kept it.”

Herc closed the locket gently, and let the chain trickle down into his palm before handing it to her. “Well, you can do more than that now, if you want.”

She pursed her lips. “Yes. If I want.”

 

* * *

  
She doesn’t wear the locket very often, even afterwards. One day, long after they are married and the bedroom is theirs to share, her jewellery box falls on the floor and the locket springs open. Herc helps pick up the straying items, and something catches his eye. The locket is no longer half empty.

He smiles, snaps it shut, and returns it to the box without meeting Carolyn’s eye.

If she’s not going to tell him, he’ll keep it to himself, but he knows what he saw.

(And to think that when Arthur had taken it, she’d said she hated that picture, that his face was too ‘simpering’. “ _Herc_ ,” she’d said, “ _Don’t leer like that, or I’ll change my answer to ‘no’_.”)

 

 

* * *

 

 


	2. Corner Shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YET ANOTHER WORLD WAR 2 AU. It’s like an addiction.
> 
> Anyway, Arthur is a teenager helping out in his mum’s corner shop, sometime after conscription started.

Sometimes Arthur lives in what his mum calls ‘a bit of a dream world’, and he quite often doesn’t know how far through the month he is without looking at a calendar, but he always knows when another Wednesday has come around, because that’s when his favourite customer comes into the shop.

Martin is his favourite customer for many reasons, but here are just a few Arthur has collated over a few years’ worth of Wednesdays:

1: He has _brilliant_ hair. It’s a sort of orangey-brown and it sticks out in places, no matter how much Martin nervously pushes it down. It was the first thing Arthur noticed when Martin had entered the shop, on the first Wednesday.

2: He always gives a sort of nervous smile when he first comes in, as if he’s not sure if Arthur’s going to remember him or not. Then, when Arthur beams and says, “Martin!”, the nervous smile turns into a big, proper smile, but it goes through a sort of in-between stage of halfway smile to get there. The in-between is Arthur’s favourite bit, because it happens so fast that most people would miss it altogether, so Arthur thinks of it as his own special thing.

3: Martin quite often chats a bit when he comes in, and gets comfy leaning on the counter. Sometimes his elbow goes dead when he does that, and he makes a funny face trying to get some feeling back into his arm. Arthur himself is a maker of many funny faces, so he appreciates it more than the average person.

4: When Martin stays to chat, he asks about Arthur and about the shop and about his mum. Those are probably Arthur’s best things to chat about, if you don’t count bears. (One day, he’s going to ask Martin what he thinks about bears.) When Arthur told him how mum gradually expanded the sweetshop into a fully-functioning General Store And Post Office, serving both halves of Fitton High Street, Martin was really impressed. He said mum must be pretty clever, and that a little village like Fitton was lucky to have her at a difficult time like this, with all the men away.

5: When Martin said that about all the men being away, he didn’t ask anything about where Arthur’s dad was.

6: Martin carries his gasmask really carefully, even though he has it on a good strong strap over his shoulder. It reminds Arthur of the way someone might hold a baby animal. Which is funny, because in some ways Martin himself reminds Arthur of a baby animal.

7: Martin always listens carefully for the exact price of his stamps, even though it has been the same since the beginning of the war, and even though he always has the exact coins ready in his hand. He always says thank you. He always puts the stamps carefully in his pocket, and then after they’ve chatted for a bit he goes across the road to the bench and writes his letters, except for a couple of times when it’s been raining, and Arthur’s actually got to watch him write the letters inside the shop.

8: Martin has very neat handwriting, not loopy like Arthur’s schoolmasters had, but very small and precise, a bit like Martin himself when he first comes into the shop, before he gets to the proper smile. On the envelopes he brings back for Arthur to post, the address lines are all beautifully spaced out, in that sort of diagonal staircase pattern that makes Arthur want to read them all over again, even though it’s always the same name and the same address.

There are more reasons than this - most Wednesdays, Arthur thinks of one or two more to add. Perhaps he could write down the list, if he had nice handwriting like Martin. Perhaps he could send it to Martin in a letter.

He wonders what it would be like to get a letter from Martin, especially one written with all the smiling he sees from Martin when he writes inside on rainy days.

 ****He wonders who Theresa is, and whether she can see the smiles in her head when she reads them, the way Arthur can see the smiles whenever he closes his eyes.


End file.
